Playoff fate all but sealed, Griffins focus on finishing season on strong note

Mark Newman | Grand Rapids GriffinsCoach Curt Fraser says the Griffins might have just run out of gas after battling just to get back into playoff contention.

GRAND RAPIDS -- Coach Curt Fraser could sense a little change in the air as the Grand Rapids Griffins held their last official practice of the season Tuesday morning at Griff’s IceHouse.

The Griffins still have four games remaining in the regular season, but they have accepted the grim reality that they will miss the playoffs for the third time in the past four seasons.

Technically, the Griffins have a miniscule chance at making the postseason. They would have to win their final four games, then hope that Oklahoma City loses their last three.

Even then, the Griffins would need both Chicago and San Antonio to stumble down the stretch, a feat made even more difficult since San Antonio hosts Oklahoma City on Friday and one of those teams is guaranteed to take two points. And in that scenario, the Griffins still would have to pass Toronto and overtake Abbotsford for fourth place in the North Division standings.

A lot of things would need to go right and a lot of teams would need to lose, but a sliver of a shot remains for the Griffins.

But they aren’t interested in tricking themselves into believing it will become reality.

"That’s the bad news," Fraser said. "The good news is we’ve got four games left to find it again, and four games that will give us a chance to go out and play some great hockey and win all these games. That would be a great way to finish."

Individually, there are plenty of players with strong incentives to finish out the year on a high note, whether they’re free agents looking for new contracts, prospects looking to get a jump on their development or standouts looking to graduate to the parent club Detroit Red Wings.

Dignity, of course, also plays a factor.

"We have to keep working hard and try to win games," defenseman Doug Janik said. "Obviously things haven’t quite worked out the way we all expected them to at the start of the year, but I think we have a lot of guys with a lot of pride and we want to finish hard."

Decisions will have to be made this offseason, and there will be several new names and faces on the Griffins’ roster for the 2011-12 season.

But captain Jamie Tardif, who will be an unrestricted free agent this summer, said he’s not looking that far into the future. Not with four games still remaining.

"I haven’t really thought about it," Tardif said. "I had been focused on trying to help this team make the playoffs and fell short of that. Right now, I’m focusing on finishing the year off strong."

Still, the sting of missing the postseason clearly is felt by the team.

The Griffins followed a 13-5-1-3 stretch that had moved them into third place in the North Division with a season-high five-game losing streak, including a pair of defeats at Abbotsford last weekend that effectively ended their postseason shot for another year.

"Obviously we were at the same point last year that we are this year, on the outside looking in," Tardif said. "Losing five games in a row at this point in the year is definitely not a way to get into the playoffs. It’s been tough."

Janik said missing this postseason hurts more than it did a year ago. After finishing five games below .500 in 2009-10 -- at 35-31-2-8, they are assured of finishing with at least a .500 record this year -- the Griffins came into the season with high expectations.

But after hovering one game above or below .500 from Nov. 20 to Feb. 25, the Griffins’ late-season push wasn’t enough to keep them at the top of the standings.

"We were so close. Two weeks ago, we had done a fantastic job and put ourselves in a position that I don’t think many people thought we were going to get to," Janik said. "To kind of lose it this late was disappointing."

Fraser said his team has been forced to play playoff hockey every night for essentially the past two months, and it looked like they just ran out of gas at the end.

"The guys battled hard through a lot of adversity and for a two-week stretch we could have still been in the playoffs," Fraser said. "With our team, that would have been a real accomplishment.

"But we should have never been in this position. We should have been better throughout the year."